I originally thought to do both the big shoes and the little shoes in the same drawing, but each pair took longer to draw on their own than I expected, so I separated them. This is the same pair I attempted to capture in watercolor.

One thing I like about working in continuous line is the personality in the sketches. When I work in a more realistic style, I feel there’s some necessary quality missing from the finished product. And if I truly want an exact replica of the boots, I can take a photograph. This loose style of drawing captures the life of the object in a way that I can’t manage in a realistic drawing or a photo.

The other thing I like about this style is that it forces me to work on my weaknesses. I can’t go over and over the same section, trying to get a line just right, constantly editing myself. Although I admit to a few erasures when a line really went awry, I mostly stayed true to the idea of continuous line.

This is me trying to salvage my ego from this week’s earlier piece, the gulls watercolor. It came out a little flat, like it’s not oriented in a three-dimensional space, but I kind of like the effect. One difference between this piece and the gulls is that this one is on true watercolor paper. What a difference in the way the paper and paint interact! Lesson learned: stick with watercolor paper for watercolor paints.

My mother calls this little pink flower “oxalis”, my husband calls it “buffalo clover”, and I call it “obnoxious.” It multiplies like crazy, crowding out any other low-lying bedding plants. My son picked this little bouquet today, and I gave it the speed treatment. I drew this right after dinner, so the flowers are mostly closed up for the evening. With this sketch, I thought I might be getting a little more comfortable with speedy sketching…

…until I got to this drawing. I’m frustrated at the stiff, blocky feel of this sketch, but I’m hopeful that practice, practice, practice will win out in the end, helping me develop a smoother, more confident line in my drawings.